


Serenade for Strings

by madame_faust



Category: Phantom of the Opera (1943)
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 07:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13290222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: When Christine was a little girl, she used to hear the sound of a lonely violin outside her bedroom window. It was one of her few memories of the flat she shared with her parents in Paris. The last place she expected to hear the music again was in a drafty corridor of the Paris Opéra House.





	Serenade for Strings

**Author's Note:**

> So, I love the 1943 version for a lot of reasons - Christine being sensible and choosing her career over her dueling beaus, the beaus shrugging off her decision and strolling into the sunset together. But I also love Claude Rains and the original concept of the Phantom who becomes Christine's benefactor and teacher because he's her father (I love a platonic Phantom and Christine and wish the movie had gone in that direction, so this is technically an AU). But that led me to wonder why he wasn't in her life all those years. And this was the result of my wondering. (Also, because this is me, if he wasn't, like, ten when this movie was made, there would absolutely be a dashing Persian fellow hanging around played by Omar Sharif.)

"Is this your first time in Paris?" 

It was a difficult question to answer. Yes, Christine had lived in Paris before, when she was a little girl. But she remembered very little of that time in her life - save one thing, and it hardly seemed worth mentioning.

There was a man who used to play the violin outside her window at night. 

If Maman knew that she was up past her bedtime, she'd be furious. Her temper had been short these past weeks. They were moving, she said. Far away. To the country. Where the filth and corruption of the wicked city could not harm them.

Christine did not think the city was wicked. Not their little street with its three-story flats, laundry hanging between the windows like the sails on a pirate ship. Christine often sat by her window and day-dreamed, thinking of a hundred little adventures as the sunlight crept in over the tops of the surrounding buildings, dappling her cheeks with gold. But the sun was down. The stars were out. And Christine was meant to be asleep.

Instead she was kneeling at the very edge of her bed, as if in prayer, but her head was not bowed and her hands were not folded. Instead, her little fingers were pressed against the window ledge, her pert nose squashed flat against the glass, her steaming breath freezing against the cold windowpane. The frost that covered the streets was beautiful, in her eyes. But nothing was as beautiful as the sound of the music.

It was a different song every night, but not children's songs about sheep and lost shoes. Instead, it was Brahms. Dvorak. Tchaikovsky. 

Christine knew the names of those great men as well as she did any nursery rhyme, for her Papa was a musician. A fine one. The finest in the world. But Papa was gone now, and only the music remained.

Once, Christine had known why her mother, once plump and cheerful, was so haggard and cross. Once she'd known that she had a father, the best father in all the world, who loved her as much as he loved music. And once, she remembered how her former life was torn away from her, one terrible night.

She'd awakened to the sound of raised voices. Sometimes men were loud and violent and brawled in the street below. That frightened her and she would run to her parents' bed, burrowing in between them until she was asleep again. But this row was not taking place outside her home; it was coming from the little parlor where Papa took her upon his knee every night when he came home from work. Which Maman kept so neat and tidy when they had callers. But that night, it was the site of a war. 

_"Why are you doing this?"_ Maman asked, tearful and pleading. _"How can you say such things? How can you_ do _such things?"_

Then Papa's voice, quiet and steady. The best sound in the world. _"Believe me, Régine, I've struggled...so long. You don't know how I've - "_

 _"That's a lie, Erique! You've always done as you pleased,"_ Maman insisted. Christine peered fearfully out from her hiding place around the corner in the kitchen. Maman had her hands on her hips and was crying, red-faced and angry. Papa had his back to her, shoulders squared, but his head was bowed down, like Maman was the sea and he a rock being buffeted. Maman was taller than him, which made the neighbors laugh and make jokes, but Christine did not see why that should matter. Papa was the greatest man who'd ever lived. 

Maman continued to rail, but Papa didn't shrink away. He let the words crash around him, like rolling waves. 

_"It's working at the Opéra that's done it! That's put these foolish - these_ wicked _notions in your head! Fancy ladies and...and unnatural men! You need God, Erique! You must ask God for guidance!"_

 _"You think I have not?"_ Papa asked, head snapping as sharply as his voice had. There was an undercurrent of anger that Christine had never heard from him and it frightened her almost as badly as his next words. _"I've tried. For years I've tried. I've begged Him and pleaded with Him - but either He doesn't hear me...or He doesn't exist."_

Maman reeled back, then raised her arm. Christine closed her eyes, but not her ears and heard the sound of flesh on flesh. When she dared look again, Papa was standing just as he had been. Still as stone. 

_"I'm not abandoning you,"_ Papa said quietly. _"Nor Christine. You'll have just as much of my salary as you have done. Only I can't go on living here. I can't."_

Maman only wept harder at that and Christine wept too, silently, her hands pressed over her mouth as she started to realize just what the row was about - Papa was leaving them. Going away. But _why_?

 _"You hardly make enough to keep us in a decent flat! To keep your daughter in decent clothes!"_ Maman sobbed. _"Oh, if only you'd never left the conservatory, rather than playing for your meals like a busker! Writing music you never sell! You could have gone on teaching! It would have been a good life! A_ decent _life for us!"_

Papa's answer was so cold, Christine shivered to hear it. _"I could no more do that...Régine, that is the only ting more impossible to me than continuing this...ruse with you. I am so sorry, my dear, you don't know how sorry - "_

 _"No,"_ Maman said through her tears, her voice quietly vicious. _"Not yet you aren't. But you'll be - I swear to you, Erique, if you walk out of this house now, you'll never come back into it! I'll take Christine, far from this awful place, away from you. She'll never know you. Never!_

Christine almost burst into the room then, the claim too shocking to imagine. Forget her father? She could no more forget her father than she could forget her own name. Not Papa, her hero, her storyteller, her best friend. Who was never too tired to kneel and open his arms to her when he came home from work. Who never told her to play by herself awhile because he had better things to do. Who never asked her to find some other occupation and give him a bit of peace.

She was the only peace he'd ever known, he told her once, in that same sad voice he'd just spoken to Maman with. She was his peace. He told her so.

But Christine stayed still and silent. She couldn't speak. Couldn't squeak out a word for Papa - her dear, Papa - was crying. She did not know that Papas could cry and that made her so afraid, she could not find her voice, could not even move. Eventually, when their voices faded to quiet, hateful murmurs among the tears, she tip-toed back to bed and pulled the covers over her head. A bad dream. A nightmare. It had to be. And when she woke in the morning, Papa would be sitting at the table with his coffee and his newspaper, waiting for her to sit beside him so that she might give him a kiss before he went into the city for work.

Papa's place at the breakfast table, was empty. The kitchen did not even smell of the coffee that Maman brewed only for his sake. She only took tea.

"Maman?" Christine asked in a trembling voice. "Where is Papa?"

Maman did not answer her. Only looked at her with puffy eyes and sighed with a hoarse voice. Then she turned back to the stove and quietly served Christine her breakfast. 

That was the first night she heard him. Playing Tchaikovsky. Her favorite. 

Christine flung the covers off and used all her strength to open her window, leaning so far out she nearly fell. There was a man outside, wearing a felt hat and a cloak, playing the violin. He played the whole song through, perfectly, the most beautiful thing she'd ever heard. Then he turned and looked right at her window, right at her, she thought, and bowed. It was too dark and she too far to see his face, but she _knew_ , she _hoped_ , she _wished_...

Screwing up her eyes against the tears that threatened, Christine took a deep breath and called out, "Papa!" into the night.

But when she opened her eyes there was nobody there.

Maman kept her word. A few more weeks and they left for the country where Maman worked as a ladies' maid at a grand house. There was no more music at night, except for the songs Christine played in her head and hummed under her breath, to serenade herself to sleep. At her new school, she was Christine DuBois, not Christine Claudin.

 _"You'll forget, darling,"_ Maman said that first day in their new home as she tied a ribbon in her hair and smoothed her cheeks with a rough, dry palm. _"You're young. I'm sure...I hope you forget."_

And she did, little by little. Papa faded in her memory until he was little more than a comforting presence in her mind, like the invisible warmth of a fireside. A pair of kind eyes. Maman presented herself as a widow and Christine heard and repeated the lie so many times that she believed it. She, in time, forgot that she ever had another name. Scarcely remembered living in Paris. But she did remember the music.

Which was why, one lonely afternoon, tired of knowing nothing and no one at the Opéra, Christine's head snapped up as her ears caught the sound of a solo violinist playing in an empty corridor. Tchaikovsky. 

Her breath caught. She screwed her eyes shut against an unexplainable rush of tears and without even realizing she was going to speak, she called in a trembling voice, "Papa?"

The music stopped. The sound of her voice came like a rush, a secret long-kept, bursting to be free. Without consciously knowing why, Christine walked, then ran down the hall toward where she thought she'd heard the music coming from. A blank wall greeted her. A closed door. She seized the handle and pulled with all her might - nothing. A cupboard with only mops and brooms and feather duster. 

It was Anatole Garron who found her, an hour later, breathless and red-faced from crying, though when he asked her what the matter was, she had no answer to give. 

Tenderly he took her hand and pulled her to her feet. He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and led her back to the auditorium, chatting half to himself about overwrought nerves and the restorative powers of a good cup of tea. 

Christine dried her eyes on her handkerchief and thanked M. Garron for his kindness. Speaking, as he was, directly in her ear, his voice was so loud she almost missed the sound of the violin which started again nearby, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. She glanced up at M. Garron, but he only smiled blandly at her. As if he didn't hear a thing.

She did not try to run after the sound again, not certain if she was actually hearing it or only wishing she was hearing it. Yet as they left that dismal, cold corridor, Christine chanced a glance over her shoulder.

The shadows did not shift. The torches did not shiver, but somehow she _knew_ she was not alone.

 _I'll find you,_ she vowed silently, to God, herself, or somehow else, she did not know for sure. _I'll not forget._


End file.
